Using the Web Tools Project
What is the Web Tools Project?
Installing the Web Tools Project
Using the Web Services Explorer
Creating Sample Data
Creating WSDL and Schema
Publishing WSDL to UDDI
Setting WS-I Compliance Preference
Resources for Further Help

ActiveBPEL™ Designer and Eclipse Web Tools Project

What is the Web Tools Project?

The Web Tools Project is a set of Eclipse plugins that provide an infrastructure to ActiveBPEL Designer and other Eclipse-based development environments targeting Web and Web Service enabled applications such as BPEL processes.

If you are looking for tools to help with development and testing of Web Services artifacts (e.g., WSDL and Schemas files), you can install the plugins required for the Web Tools Project into ActiveBPEL Designer. After installing the plugins, you can conveniently test your BPEL processes with automatically generated sample data without leaving the Designer environment.

The Web Tools Project contains many tools, but in particular, several are useful enhancements for BPEL development. The following table describes tools in the Web Tools plugin that support BPEL development.

Web Tools Feature	Advantage for BPEL
Automatic WSDL generation, WSDL validation, and WSDL Editor	Create WSDLs in support of BPEL activities (receive/reply, onMessage/reply, and invoke activities).
Web Service testing	Deploy a BPEL process, and then use the WSDL testing form to instantiate the process. Once the process is active, you can remote debug it.
Schema validation and Schema Editor	Create schema for WSDL message types
XSD to XML generation	Generate XML documents for sample data. Use sample data for process simulation. With some minor editing, also use the sample data for remote debugging.
UDDI registry publication and discovery	Publish WSDL so that others can connect to your BPEL processes.
Set the level of Web services interoperability (WS-I) compliance in Preferences	Create and test WSDLs for WS-I compliant SOAP/HTTP messages.

Standards that the Web Tools Project supports include Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), Web Services Description Language (WSDL), Web Services Inspection Language (WSIL), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services Interoperability (WS-I).

Installing the Web Tools Project into ActiveBPEL Designer

For convenience we have included the runtime plugins required to enable the Web Tools project Editiors and Explorers. Click here to download the file.

To install the plugins follow these simple steps:

Be sure that the ActiveBPEL Designer is closed.
Extract all the contents of the zip file under the [ActiveBPEL Designer install directory]/Designer directory.

Make sure that you have "Use folder names" checked if the option exists.

Start ActiveBPEL Designer.

Using the Web Services Explorer to Instantiate a BPEL Process

When you deploy a BPEL process to the ActiveBPEL server, you instantiate the process by sending an appropriately formatted SOAP message to the server. The Web Services Explorer is an ideal tool for this task.

Follow these general steps to use the Web Services Explorer.

Deploy a BPEL process to the ActiveBPEL Server.
In a Web browser, go to http://localhost:8080/active-bpel/services. This page lists all service names for all deployed BPEL processes. The names are for the My Role partner links of BPEL processes.
On the Services page, select WSDL next to one of the services to open the WSDL, as the example shows.

Copy the WSDL URL that appears in the browser Address field.
In ActiveBPEL Designer, select Run>Launch the Web Services Explorer.
In the Web Services Explorer toolbar, select WSDL Page.
From the Navigator, select WSDL Main to open the Open WSDL pane.
Paste the URL in the WSDL URL field, as shown in the following example:

Select Go to display the WSDL operation(s).
Select an operation to display the message part(s) for the BPEL process' initial receive or onMessage activity. The following illustration shows an example.

Fill in data values for the message parts and select Go. This action instantiates the BPEL process.
The Status pane shows the result of normal (or faulted) execution. In normal execution the result in the BPEL reply message is shown, as in the following example.

As you test BPEL processes in this manner, you can also remote debug processes in the Designer. Follow the instructions in online help to configure a remote debug session. Start the session, then navigate to the Web Services Explorer to instantiate a process.

Creating Sample Data for Simulation

In ActiveBPEL Designer, you can simulate execution of a BPEL process without deploying the process to a server. Before you begin simulation, you must initialize process variables. For simple types, you just double-click a variable to add a sample data value. For complex types, you load a sample data file.

An easy way to create sample data files for complex variables is to use the Web Tools Project feature to generate XML from schema (XSD) files.

Your WSDL definition may or may not already include a schema section. If you do not yet have schema definitions for WSDL messages, see Creating WSDL and Schema below.

If you do already have schema for WSDL messages, you can create an XML file for each root element by right-clicking an XSD file in a workspace project and selecting Generate>XML. Note that your schema must have at least one root element. If you copied a WSDL <types> section to the schema editor to save as an XSD file, you need to use the schema editor to add a root element.

The following illustration shows a sample schema element definition and the XML file generated from it.

schema message definition and sample XML message

For details, refer to the online help topic Generating XML files from XML schemas, in the Web Application Development Guide. This guide is added to online help when you install the Web Tools Project.

Creating WSDL and Schema

A WSDL definition is the required starting point for creating an executable BPEL process. Public WSDLs published in UDDI registries can be imported into ActiveBPEL Designer. Alternately, you can create your own WSDLs.

The Web Tools Project provides both a WSDL skeleton generator and a WSDL Editor. The WSDL skeleton contains placeholder definitions for all typicaly required elements and attributes. By adding namespaces and types, you can quickly create a new WSDL appropriate for your BPEL application. The WSDL Editor contains a graphical toolkit to assist you in adding WSDL and schema elements and attributes without hand-coding the XML.

Follow these general steps to create a WSDL skeleton and use the WSDL and Schema Editors:

In the workbench, select File > New > Other > Web Services > WSDL. Click Next.
Complete the New WSDL File wizard, ensuring you select Create WSDL Skeleton on the Options page.
The new WSDL file opens in the WSDL Editor, in Source Mode. Select the Graph tab to view the WSDL as shown in the following example.

Make modifications to WSDL properties or to any of the element groups by using the right-mouse menu. For example, right-click anywhere in the Definition box and select Edit Namespaces to add a namespace.
To edit the schema, double-click in the namespace in the Types box. The Schema Editor opens, as shown in the following example.

Here are some tips for using the WSDL Editor:

A BPEL process requires that WSDL files contain partnerLink type definitions, and optionally, message properties and aliases. Currently, you can add these definitions manually in the WSDL Editor. Alternately, you can add them via a wizard in ActiveBPEL Designer.
You can right-click a WSDL file in the Navigator and select Validate WSDL file. Currently, if you have any BPEL extensions in the file, a validation error is reported. However, ActiveBPEL Designer validates the file without reporting errors when you add it to Web References.
ActiveBPEL Designer contains an Operation Wizard which creates a WSDL from scratch. You may wish to compare the WSDL creation features of ActiveBPEL Designer and the Web Tools Project to see which tool you prefer.

Publishing WSDL to UDDI

You can make the WSDL documents for your Web services available though Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). You can also browse the UDDI Business Registries or WSIL documents to locate existing Web services.

Through UDDI and WSIL, applications can discover WSDL documents and bind with them to execute business processes. UDDI enables the discovery of Web services by providing a distributed registry of businesses and their service descriptions.

Your BPEL processes are Web services that you can publish. You must publish a business entity and at least one business service, and service interface in a UDDI registry. The Web Services Explorer supports the publication, discovery, and maintenance of business entities, business services, and service interfaces.

The following illustration shows an example of two services discovered and retrieved from a UDDI registry.

For details, see the Help topic, Publishing Web services and business entities in the Web Application Development Guide.

Setting Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Compliance

You can use the Web Tools Project to validate your WSDLs for WS-I compliance. By setting a preference to require compliance, you are warned about non-compliance when you use the WSDL Editor and other tools. You can set a compliance preference on the workspace or project level.

To set compliance for a project, right-click a project in the Navigator and select Properties. Select Profile Compliance and Validation, as shown in the example.

Project properties for WS-I compliance setting

For more information, see the help topic Web services interoperability in the Web Application Development Guide.

Resources for Further Help

When you install the Web Tools Project to ActiveBPEL Designer, the Web Application Development Guide is installed in the Help system. Refer to this Guide for details on using all the Web Tools.